


Love is Patient

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Cultural Differences, Desire, F/M, First Time, Love, Romance, Wedding Night, interracial couple, patience - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13933740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: On their wedding night, Shinko is nervous, and Roald is patient.





	Love is Patient

Love is Patient

Shinko shouldn’t have been afraid of her husband on her wedding night—Roald put the gentle in gentleman, after all—but she was. The terrible twin thoughts that she would displease him or that he would hurt her paralyzed her like the venom of a poisonous serpent. Perhaps Roald could scent her fear as a snake could because he leaned closer to her on the narrow edge of the large bed that was theirs to share now. 

“I’ll wait until you’re ready, Shinko.” Roald stroked the hair away from her ear to murmur his promise into it. He always whispered his promises into her ear as if they were secrets. That was something about him that often made Shinko’s spine shiver like an awed soldier kneeling before an emperor. “I’ll be patient with you. You don’t have to worry.” 

“Tonight?” Shinko struggled like a carp flung from it pond to breathe. For so many nights during the Scanran War, she had longed for his return—his absence an ache in her heart—so they could be wed, but now that they were properly married before gods and mortals, she was nervous about how it would feel to have him inside her. She had heard that it tore a woman—made her bleed from her most private part—to have a man enter her. The idea of being ripped apart even by Roald wasn’t appealing. 

“Always.” Roald’s fingers slid along her silk hair to rest, soft and warm as a lamb’s wool blanket, over her back, where he began to massage out the nerves coiled into her rigid spine that eventually relaxed under his mild ministrations. “Love is patient.” 

He was alluding to the reading from a sacred text of the Goddess that he had requested the presiding archpriestess read at their wedding ceremony. Such a passage, Lady Cythera had commented to her more than once throughout the long process of preparing for the ceremony, was a customary selection for women. 

Shinko hadn’t needed to ask why a reading that emphasized the kindness, patience, and faithfulness of love was a popular choice for women. It would be a plea from women for the men they married to treat them compassionately and chivalrously. From Roald, it carried a different meaning. It was a pledge rather than a plea. It was a subversion of tradition as much as it was an adherence to it. Shinko hadn’t needed to be born and raised in Tortall to appreciate the complexity of his selection. 

“You don’t have to be patient on our wedding night.” Shinko wished she had the strength to look at him rather than the carpet with its spiraling flowers in an ever-blooming garden. “I know my duty, and I will do it.” 

“I don’t want your duty.” Roald’s breath was surprisingly hot in Shinko’s ear, and her cheeks burned. “I want your desire.” 

“You can’t have my desire.” Shinko glanced at him from under lowered lashes more in invitation than rejection. “A proper lady feels no desire.” 

In the Yamani Islands, Shinko had been taught that desire was for courtesans and duty was for respectable wives. Virtue, in the Yamani Islands, could never be combined with the vulgarity and lust of desire. 

“Not even a little?” Roald’s hand drifted to her waist but dropped no further though that was enough to make Shinko’s skin tingle. 

“Maybe a little,” Shinko admitted. 

When his mouth moved from her ear to her lips, she hoped he could taste how much she desired him. He must have tasted her passion because his hands cupped her breasts. The fabric between them felt too thin, too flimsy a shield for what was left of her maiden’s modesty, and she gasped. 

He took his hands away, and she was just starting to miss the warmth of them when they reappeared with light squeezes on her breasts to announce themselves. She eased into the tenderness of his touch until his fingers explored beneath her bodice. Prince Eitaro, she remembered as her blood became ice, had told her that Tortallan men preferred their women curvy as mountain, not straight as a glaive. Roald would be able to feel, now that there was nothing between his fingers and her breasts, that she was flat as a coin. 

“You’re turning into a stone princess.” Roald lifted a palm from her breast to stroke her cheek. “Am I moving too fast for you?” 

“No.” When Shinko was with Roald, his very presence soothed her and nothing felt rushed. “I’ll relax.” 

Prince Eitaro, she added to herself, didn’t belong in their marriage bed and would be summarily exiled from her mind. 

“Good.” Laughter twinkled like rays of sunshine in Roald’s lake blue eyes. “I can’t make love to a statue, can I?” 

“I don’t imagine you can.” Shinko did something only courtesans were supposed to do in bed: she giggled. 

She didn’t giggle when Roald’s hands descended beneath her bodice again, but she did arch her back in pleasure. It was only when he touched her thigh that she turned into a statue again. 

“What’s wrong?” He patted her leg, and that might have been reassuring if it hadn’t been a reminder of where his hand was on her body. 

“I’ve never done it before.” It was, Shinko chided herself, a foolish, graceless thing to say. She was a princess on her wedding night. Of course she was a virgin because she was meant to be one. 

Roald hesitated then said softly, “Neither have I.” 

Shinko tilted her head at him. It would never have been proper for her to ask but she had heard rumors about the flower girls in Tortall who threw themselves on squires and on knights patrolling the Scanran border during the war. 

“It didn’t seem fair for me to tumble anyone before I met you since you’d be expected to stay chaste for me.” If anyone was uncomfortable with double standards, it was her Roald. In the candlelight, he was blushing to the roots of his midnight hair, and Shinko found that oddly endearing. “Once I met you, there was no way I could be with anybody else. I only want to be with you, Shinko.” 

“I want to be with you, too, Roald.” Shinko’s heart hammered in her ears, a drumbeat of desire and fear. “Even if it does hurt.” 

“It won’t hurt.” Roald was quietly adamant. “I’d never hurt you.” 

Shinko might have argued that it was supposed to hurt—the pain and the blood evidence that she was a virtuous woman, a flaming crimson testimony to her purity—but he lifted her skirt. When he delved inside her, it wasn’t with the organ she had anticipated but with his tongue. His tongue crept between her folds and stole into hidden caverns she hadn’t realized existed within her. Sensations she hadn’t envisioned were possible convulsed through her in ocean waves. She was discovering the heights of pleasure as much as he was exploring the depths of her. 

When it was over and he had penetrated her with more than his tongue, she pillowed her head against his chest as his fingers combed through her hair. 

“Did it hurt?” He brushed her hair away from her face as if to better see the answer written in her eyes. 

“No.” There was blood on the sheets and something inside Shinko had broken but she hadn’t felt shattered when Roald moved within her. With Roald inside her, she had felt whole. 

“Excellent.” He kissed her forehead. “I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you, my love.” 

“It was”—Shinko couldn’t find the words to describe the wonder she had felt—“the most pleasant experience I’ve ever had, Roald.” 

“I wasn’t too stiff?” Roald’s fingers traced her chin, and in the flickering candlelight, she could glimpse the shadows that always haunted his features whenever he forgot that if the worst criticism courtiers could hurl at him was that he took his duties too seriously that was proof he was a better person than any cruel court gossip could ever be. “People are forever complaining I’m too stiff in everything.” 

“I would never claim to be an expert in such matters”—Shinko concealed her mischief behind a demure tone—“but I believe a certain stiffness is an advantage for a man in bed.” 

“Shinko!” Roald sounded torn between amusement and shock at her wicked humor. 

“Now you sound stiff in a bad way.” Shinko elbowed him in the ribs. “That was a joke. You’re supposed to laugh at it, dear.” 

“When I look at you, laughter isn’t the first thing that comes to mind right now.” Roald’s lingering glance was enough to stir Shinko’s desire again. “You tempt me to far more than laughter.”


End file.
